Four-lepton decays of neutral vector mesons

Abstract

We investigate the rare electromagnetic decays of neutral vector mesons (exemplified by $J/\psi$, $\Upsilon$, $\rho^0$, $\omega,\phi$, \ldots) into four charged leptons ($2(e^+e^-)$, $2(\mu^+\mu^-)$, $2(\tau^+\tau^-)$, $e^+e^-\mu^+\mu^-$, $e^+e^-\tau^+\tau^-$, \ldots) at lowest order in QED. In contrast to the case of vector meson decay into a single pair of leptons, the lepton mass must be retained in these four-lepton decay channels to cutoff the mass singularity. Owing to more pronounced collinear enhancement, the branching fractions of vector mesons decays into $ 2(e^+e^-)$ are considerably greater than those for decays into $2(\mu^+\mu^-)$. The decay channels $J/\psi(\Upsilon)\to 2(e^+e^-), e^+e^-\mu^+\mu^-$ are predicted to have branching fractions of order $10^{-5}$, which appear to have bright observation prospect at {\tt BESIII}, {\tt Belle 2} and {\tt LHC} experiments.